Rogue career colleges that take advantage of students with false promises and fake degrees face a $250,000 fine a under tough new rules.

In just four months, Chona Baclayon was accredited as a personal support worker and nursing assistant at the Ontario Academy of Science and Technology. She also received certificates in palliative care, food science and “dimentia studies.”

Rogue career colleges that take advantage of students with false promises and fake degrees face a $250,000 fine and increased policing under tougher rules announced Wednesday by the province.

The new regulations, which take effect Sunday, come after a Star investigation in which two reporters posing as students revealed how easy it is to get bogus certification to work in health care and security.

One reporter was certified as a personal support worker and nursing assistant after just two weeks of classes, delivered primarily through instructional DVDs and Wikipedia handouts. The other received one day's training and a worthless certificate to work as a security guard at Pearson airport.

"We went through a period where we were educating the sector, where we were giving them opportunities to comply with the rules," John Milloy, minister of colleges and universities, told the Star. "They've had their time to understand the act. ... We're going to be much more aggressive in terms of inspecting and calling them out when they've broken rules."

In addition to the massive fines, the province will hire two more inspectors before year's end, for a total of 12, and launch an information campaign alerting students to the dangers of enrolling in an unregistered private career college.

In announcing tougher sanctions, the ministry is acknowledging what critics have said for years and the Star investigation supported – that passive enforcement doesn't work.

In a hard-hitting report tabled in July, Ontario ombudsman André Marin blasted the ministry for focusing on "educating transgressors rather than penalizing them." In a section of the report titled "Always the Carrot, Never the Stick," he urged the province to abandon its tactics of "moral suasion" and "restraining orders" to bring bogus schools into compliance. "Unfortunately, this passive method of enforcement is not particularly effective when dealing with unscrupulous operators," Marin wrote.

An undercover Star reporter enrolled in the personal support worker program at the Ontario Academy of Science and Technology this summer witnessed the ministry's kid-glove approach.

A provincial inspector posted a note at the academy in North York warning students the school was operating illegally. The director of education, Ken Miller, was told he had 15 days to come into compliance and had to close in the interim.

The ministry note disappeared from the door after the inspector left and classes resumed days later.

The Star reporter graduated after a little more than two weeks with two health-care certificates and a bogus resumé provided by Miller.

Despite a ministry cease-and-desist order and visits from provincial inspectors, Miller recently told a former student he's still operating.

"No one in the world will ever stop me from teaching," he told Chona Baclayon, who didn't know the school was not registered until she read it in the Star. By law, all private career colleges and their staff must be registered with the province.

"I don't care about the ministry," Miller told Baclayon. "They are dogs. They are dogs."

In just four months, Baclayon, a Filipina caregiver, was accredited as a personal support worker and nursing assistant. She also received certificates in palliative care, food science and "dimentia studies." Miller, who claims in his brochures to have attended prestigious universities around the world, misspelled dementia on her certificate.

The food science certificate, for which Baclayon said she was charged $30, involved a one-day course where Miller taught students how to make homemade Irish cream whisky.

Since learning of the school's illegal status, Baclayon has attempted to recoup her tuition costs, hoping to apply the $1,230 she paid toward an education at a legitimate school.

Asked to comment Wednesday on the ministry's new regulations, Miller became enraged.

"What's the problem!" he shouted repeatedly. He said he had closed the school and refunded some students' tuitions as directed by the ministry in an Aug. 28 notice.

Following the Star's interview with Milloy, the minister dispatched a manager of the private career college compliance unit to the school at Bathurst St. and Wilson Ave. to determine if it was still open as reports suggested. The inspector found no evidence it was.

With files from Brett Popplewell

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